SUZIE YORKE FOUNDER AND CEO, THE GOOD FAT CO.

More than a few of us turned to comfort food in the first few weeks of the pandemic after being sent home. All of a sudden, baking was in and grocers started running out of flour, yeast and everything else needed to make bread, cakes and other carb-heavy foods. Eventually, though, healthier eating came back and while we may not be looking for on-the-go snacks like we once were, Suzie Yorke is ready when we are.

Fat is back, Yorke will tell you. Not just any fat, of course, but the good kind. The kind that people on the keto diet crave since sugary treats are not allowed. The kind that her three-yearold company, The Good Fat Co. Ltd., which does business as Love Good Fats, sells in the form of high-fat, low-carb and low-sugar bars in places such as Costco, Walmart and plenty of other grocers and health-food stores, including Whole Foods Canada, the first outlet to take a chance on her startup.

Pre-pandemic, Yorke says, her company was growing by mid-triple digits, and its bars were the No. 1 “intentional snacking” bar on the continent. Though the lockdowns have put a dent in that hypergrowth, the company was still able to raise $10.7 million in series A financing in March, its highest raise ever and enough to keep it going for the foreseeable future.

More impressive, perhaps, is that Yorke has arrived at this point fairly late in her career. An electrical engineer by training, she spent 30 years as a marketer, mostly at consumer packaged goods companies, starting at Procter & Gamble Co., and then PepsiCo Inc., Kraft Heinz Co. and Weight Watchers International Inc. Still, the single mom wanted to branch out on her own, which she did in 2017, fulfilling a childhood dream.

It’s been quite a three-year journey since then, but she says the most challenging part was actually creating a tasty, shelf-stable bar, since sugar and high-carb binding agents are often used to make snack bars. Once she developed such a recipe, with a couple of PhDs in lipids, she was informed that the producer she had found was ceasing production, putting her $80,000 out of pocket. Still, as the old adage goes, persistence paid off in the end.

I always wanted to start my own company and I was 15 when I told my mom. It was 35 years later by the time I could call her and say, ‘Okay, it’s real.’ The scariest step was when I realized I didn’t have any income at all. I’m doing this two feet in.

At first, I had no brand, no idea, not enough money. But then I had the brand, I had some money saved aside. I had time. I think people at our meetings were more brave than me, because I would go to all these meetings and say I’m starting my own brand, but deep inside of me, I was like, ‘Oh, am I really? It’s such a big deal. Am I really going to be on the shelf one day?’

When you tell 200 people that you’re starting your own brand and 199 of them say, ‘This is a big idea, how can I help you?’ which

I was a single mom. I had my savings, my kids’ savings. And I took all that and I paid for everything upfront, upfront, upfront. When you turn the machines on and the minimum runs are 100,000 bars per flavour and you have two flavours, you have to pay upfront. I needed a little bit more, so I got some angel money and I’m very grateful for that.

We were in about 25 stores and then 100 stores and then within six weeks we were the No. 1 and No. 2 fastest-turning bars in the store, according to the store managers. Within 18 months, we had 10 bars and we launched into 2019 fuelling with innovation. We grew really, really quickly. We grew 5,500% in 2018 versus 2017, and 550% in 2019 versus 2018.

We’re in hypergrowth and we’re literally averaging 80 times higher per month versus the year ago. It was crazy.

The pandemic has affected our company tremendously on multiple fronts. The first one is that we’re a three-year-old startup in hypergrowth, we’re going into our year two in the U.S. and we’re in a category of bars, on-the-go bars, that got hit really hard as people were no longer on the go.

We’re lucky enough that the pandemic hit this year, not a year earlier. When you’re starting a brand, the basics of building awareness and trial are really key.

We had to take care of four strategic pillars right off the bat March 5th when we had our first weekend meeting to say, ‘Holy, something’s going on here, let’s get together.’ One was to protect the health of our employees, so we closed the office down very, very quickly. Number two was protect our supply chain. Number three was protect our brand. The fourth pillar was to protect our cash flow.

Indulgence has gone through the roof. The chocolate category for the first time in years and years and years has taken off. That little indulgence is making up for the fact that you can’t do all of these other things now. We’re certainly looking at innovation to better meet the massive indulgence trend that has taken off.

COVID is slowing down our rocket-ship hypergrowth, but it’s also allowed us to catch our breath a little bit. We were able to just take a step back. I brought in a leadership team and a CFO — we didn’t have a CFO before — and a general manager who is by my side as an investor, but he came in full time from the job that he had.

You have to have perseverance and don’t give up, whether you start at age 50 like I did, or you have a whole bunch of issues like we had where we nearly didn’t take off. And then are a lot of nos, a lot of doors and a lot of problems. Just keep at it.

One of the best pieces of advice I give to younger founders who are reaching out is: start. Just take that first step of getting the sample or getting the product and going to Whole Foods to present it if you have a food product. And, two, follow your gut. There are some days you may be faced with 30 different things that you don’t know the answer to, so just follow your instinct in terms of prioritizing, getting help, asking for help and just persevering through it. It’s a fun journey.

COVID is slowing down our rocket-ship hypergrowth, but it’s allowed us to catch our breath